In July 2025 a literary scandal erupted when The Observer journalist Chloe Hadjimatheou claimed that Raynor Winn, author of the award-winning memoir The Salt Path, had omitted significant facts and invented key parts of her story. This much-loved account of Winn’s transformative and healing coastal walk with her terminally ill husband after they lost their home, had recently been made into a film.
In her article Hadjimatheou maintained that the details of how Winn and her husband lost their home and the nature of his illness were fabricated. Winn responded with a 2,300-word statement on her website defending her memoir and castigated the claims as “grotesquely unfair” and “highly misleading”.
